


Subject

by countessofbiscuit



Series: Billet Deux [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Republic Commando Series - Karen Traviss, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Background Clonecest, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dirty Facials, Edging, Episode: s02e12 The Mandalore Plot, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Genital Torture, Graphic Description, Interrogation, Leans Heavily into Legends, Mandalorian Fetts, Mandalorian Politics, Non-Consensual Bondage, Prisoner abuse, Slight canon diversion, Someone's Got a Fettish, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-11-27 20:47:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20954663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/countessofbiscuit/pseuds/countessofbiscuit
Summary: Commander Cody accompanies General Kenobi to investigate rumors about a secret Mandalorian army. He gets a little tied up.





	Subject

**Author's Note:**

> The third part of this story features a graphic, provocative episode of rape and torture.
> 
> Though I've included this with the other BoCody works, it's not really in the same 'verse. It retains the spirit of my take on terrorist!Bo-Katan circa 22 BBY and a lot of cultural-political wank relevant to the rest of the series, but it's like ... fanon diversion just for funsies. 
> 
> Written mostly to Forndom and "Panic Room" by Au/Ra.

“No one ever looks twice at Padawans, Cody. You can relax.” 

Cody’s hands dropped from the awkward wig, and he frowned at General Kenobi’s starfighter, haloed by the pale vastness of Mandalore’s southern hemisphere, expanding ever larger as they made their approach. 

There was a time Cody believed in coincidences. That was back before the Jedi. The General could probably sense Cody's unease: could probably hear him questioning the placement of the yellow stripes across face—and, now, the truthfulness of that comment. What the General disclosed about his last mission to this system many, many years ago, before Cody was even an advantageous tweak of genetic code, suggested otherwise.

“They’re going to wonder what the Temple feeds younglings these days,” Cody replied, hands returning to the controls. They had diplomatic clearance for entry but it never hurt to be prepared, especially in Mandalorian space. “I’m too old for the part, sir.” 

“Padawan is a state of mind, Cody, not necessarily a stage of life. But it may comfort you to know that I was still a Padawan at your—at Anakin’s age. We didn’t used to … ” 

Cody was an expert at interpreting disembodied audio: he could almost hear the thrusters of Kenobi’s agile mind stuttering, rapidly changing course, and then failing altogether. _Didn’t used to deploy kids?_ As with most thoughts, he kept that one to himself—or hoped he did. The Order had its duty, as did Cody, however much it bunched his blacks that day. 

Determined to finish, Kenobi compromised with a compliment. “I think my old robes suit you. You’re broader than I was, but that’s the beauty of robes. It’s almost one size fits all.”

“And one face damns all, sir. They’ll recognize me instantly.” 

Cody had said as much to the SpecOps Padawan who’d delivered the robes, the scratchy wig, and a sparring saber with half an hour to spare. The Padawan had agreed, as he daubed paint hurriedly into Cody’s cheeks; it might have been personal jealousy talking, or jealousy for Zey’s department. This _was_ the perfect tasking for an Alpha. Cody wouldn’t have begrudged Seventeen a short trip down memory lane with the General, not at all, but there was still the matter of having the same face. 

Yes, a bolshy Padawan with a blond mop and peach fuzz would have been ideal. But the General had made it clear only Cody would do. He was dirtside; he had the requisite clearance; and he was less than twenty-four hours out of bacta, getting over the worst (actually the _best_, if you'd seen the helmet footage of them akkpiling Grievous) of the scrap over Saleucami. 

The Marshal Commander would go. As for the kid, he’d get his chance. He’d probably wake up tomorrow and be asked to hand in his braid for a brigade. 

“I don’t think so,” Kenobi replied. “All that drivel about the face of the war effort isn’t about your literal face, but your armor. The average Republic citizen would hardly recognize you, let alone citizens of a city as insular as Sundari.” 

It was true. Cody never had seen his likeness on a poster. The GAR operated a closed-circuit feed for a reason. _Lids on when outdoors, kids._ Their faces surprised people: the sameness and youthfulness—_handsomeness,_ depending on which clone you asked—of the features unsettled those used to a galaxy’s worth of difference and whose touchpoint for military age meant wrinkles and a Planetary Defence paunch. 

But every common dancer knew what a clone looked like. 

And being Jango’s clone, free of any mutations or alterations save the ropework of scar tissue on his temple, and deploying to a system that had spat out a few dozen hardasses willing to follow Jango into oblivion? That just made Cody nervous in a way he couldn’t articulate. He wasn’t being shot at, for a change, and the fleet was safely coreward. So why couldn’t he relax? 

The two starfighters broke what was left of Mandalore’s atmosphere, barrelling towards Cody’s genetic motherland with the weight of everything he didn’t know or just hadn’t been told. Flash training left little room for petty tribal politics. And Sixty—the crotchety Alpha who'd shepherded Cody through the brutal finishing school that was advanced-recon—had never let on about why Fett was held in such high regard by his rabble of Mandalorian adherents who supervised the commandos. 

_He was a great warrior,_ Sixty had said, with that enigmatic insight that Cody never questioned. Sixty was hardly bioyear older than himself, but his bedtime stories came straight from Prime Clone’s mouth. _He got his revenge and retired. There are some who call him leader, some who call him traitor, and many more who think he’s dead. To you, he’s a military contractor, and that’s all you need to know._

Kenobi had been equally oblique. He reassured Cody that Jango was a dead man a decade ago. That he’d probably never even set foot in Sundari, the capital of the long-ascendant, but somehow still _new_ Mandalorian government. 

“I’ve still got a bad feeling about this,” Cody said at last. He had a hundred other feelings too about being seconded from his post for a recon, but they’d keep: a familiar groundsheet of worry. He didn’t need to remind Kenobi, but the impression some of the sergeants had left on him—and the scarred face of the planet itself, more horrific in person than in any holo—prompted him to say it all the same. “Mandalorians don’t like Jedi, either.”

“We’ve had finer hours, to be sure,” Kenobi said, casually dismissing the Order’s participation in the devastation rising rapidly before them. “But we’re a very charming pair. Just look handsome and bored, drop the military bearing, and beg leave to meditate once we’re in the palace.”

Cody's limbs wouldn't answer to anything but a military bearing, and it wouldn’t be attractive if they did. “Maybe I’ll bump into a Mandalorian princess like you, sir.” 

“If you do, may the Force be with you.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let her play with my lightsaber for state secrets.” 

Cody smirked at Kenobi’s silence as their starfighters dipped towards the lonely domed city. 

Tipoca had been desolate, but it was nothing compared to this place. Like a gun turret drowned in sand—or stubbornly dug in. Smaller geometric outcroppings poked up from the surrounding plain. Cody wondered if they served some defensive purpose. Forward scrambling bases, maybe? He squinted down at one, searching for militarized craft, but spotted nothing. 

The General steered his fighter towards one of the platforms that emerged from a honeycombed growth on the side of the dome. Cody followed. The first thing he noticed when he landed and popped his canopy—besides how utterly naked he felt without plates and his rifle—was how fair everyone was. These people couldn’t afford to be outdoorsy, not in this climate; but it'd take more than a couple centuries of inbreeding under anti-radiation biospheres to engineer such complexions. Mandalorians didn’t go anywhere in the galaxy without helmets; it was impossible to know if the few Cody had seen slumming in cantinas or leading the odd Sep militia were as blond, pale, and angular as these Sundari. Somehow, he doubted it. 

He made a show of smoothing down his robes, reassuring himself that his cheeky garter contraption was still snug around his thigh; if anyone demanded he lift his tunic, they could kiss his pretty little Westar. The sparring saber just thudded awkwardly against his other leg with every step. 

A state skiff with a ceremonial guard idled nearby. At least, Cody assumed they were ceremonial: anyone wearing a helmet like that couldn’t honestly expect to be anything more. 

The guard eyed Cody questioningly. “The Duchess awaits you, General Kenobi,” he began. “And … ?”

The General had said the authorities would be expecting them both. Cody was beginning to take very dim view of Kenobi’s handwaving attention to operational detail when he realized, with a slimy chill to his gut, that they’d never discussed his Jedi pseudonym.

Kenobi didn’t skip a beat as they mounted the skiff. “My Padawan, Kote. Far be it from us to keep the Duchess waiting.”

Cody winced. It was an unwelcome reminder of the youthful infatuation that had led him to choose a name like _glory_ because that’s what he thought Mandalore was all about. Then he got seconded to the commandos for a month to play lackey to a Mando sergeant. Nothing could have been less glorious. They were a violent, unhinged people; the loosest screws may have had rolled to Jango, but Cody had decided that, as a whole, all the light that shone from their shebs was nothing more than the marriage of hot air and jetpack fuel. 

To Kenobi’s credit, he didn’t put any heart into the pronunciation; it was probably the apathy that prevented the guard from recognizing the Mando’a—assuming he knew it at all. It hadn’t escaped Cody that all the platform’s signage was in Basic. 

“_Kote?_ Really, sir?” he whispered, as the skiff accelerated into Sundari proper. 

“I thought it might help you get into character as a wide-eyed youth," the General replied.

“Very funny.”

The crystalline city was a confusing jumble of box-like structures lumped upon, below, and beside one another like a loadmaster’s worst day. Cody had heard the sergeants complain about Kamino’s stifling architecture. Anyplace would probably feel oppressive after ten years, but he had a hunch none of them had grown up here. This Mandalore looked fragile, like a transparisteel monument to compulsory peace. All shiny surfaces reflecting everything and nothing. 

They propelled at speed through the city, too quickly for Cody to absorb much beyond the aesthetics. The Jedi Council had requested an assessment of Mandalore’s military readiness on the back of some sporadic attacks. Cody would do his best, though he had his misgivings. Violently disaffected people of any origin were a decicred a dozen; asking an officially demilitarized government to explain their actions would be like asking the Council to explain Dooku. 

Republic intelligence suspected rogue elements among Sundari’s industrial barons: their professional relationship with the Keldabe-based MandalMotors maintained the most tenuous and threadbare of links between the urbane, coreward southern hemisphere, and the isolationist northern frontier, an unspoken economic truce founded on the circulation of beskar and brains. According to Reaper and the rest of CLONINT, the likely culprits were the madcap Mandalorian commando sergeants, set loose upon the galaxy to plough their Republic earnings into violent vanity projects. It was an assessment Cody agreed with. Official recognition from Coruscant—which the north lacked—had never stopped the General from sticking his nose in before. So when Cody’s suggestion to investigate MandalMotors and its environs had been shot down, he began to consider that this assignment might be nothing more than an elaborate diplomatic charade to allow the General to visit an old flame. 

_Very technologically advanced people, conveniently uniform. They didn’t leave their illegal toys of mass destruction out for me to see, but when has that ever stopped the Republic from garrisoning a neutral planet?_

If they did, he hoped they’d send Rex. He’d enjoy the irony—the longnecks had complained that he was faulty, but _behold!_ a whole population of blonde Mandos. 

Upon reaching the palace, the guard escorted them into an expansive throne room. Pristine light shone through the geometric windows, stretching silhouettes of the Mandalorian diamond—_kar’ta beskar_—across the polished floor. Transparency might have been the architectural message, but royal heart of this city just felt gaunt and empty. 

An older man emerged from a side corridor. He was sharp-featured and simply dressed, with only a golden tabard to signify his status. 

“General Kenobi,” he said in greeting. Cody recognized the prime minister’s long face from the briefing. His purple eyes hadn’t been obvious on the holorecord, and Cody had the impression of being appraised by a Kaminoan. The feeling was unaccountable; the minister wasn’t exceptionally tall and Cody had never seen a longneck with purple irises. But he still felt somehow unfit, like he'd stepped into formation with the wrong platoon and suddenly couldn't recall his own number.

_Don’t fidget with the lightsaber, don’t fidget with the lightsaber, don’t fidget …_

“Thank you for meeting with me, Prime Minister Almec,” the General said. “May I introduce one of our Padawan learners, Kote.” If Almec recognized Cody, or caught the Mando’a, he too betrayed nothing beyond the surprise at finding two Jedi on his doorstep when only expecting one. “If you and the Duchess will permit it, the Council felt Kote would benefit from observing this meeting.” 

Almec extended his hand for shaking. “I welcome you both as a servant of the people, but I’m troubled by the false rumors that brought you here.” He and Kenobi moved further into the room. Cody fell in step behind. “Mandalore would never turn against the Republic. The Duchess Satine values peace more than her own life."

“Oh, I’m aware of the Duchess’s views—” 

“Master Kenobi, Mandalore’s violent past is behind us. All of our warriors were exiled to our moon, Concordia. They died out, years ago.” 

Cody thought that a very delusional claim—to say nothing of the casual admission of such inhumanity, were it even true.

“Hmm. Are you certain?” Kenobi asked. He had the healthy skepticism of a man who’d gotten involved in this system's internecine violence within his own hardly-middle-aged lifetime. “I recently encountered a man who wore Mandalorian armor … Jango Fett.”

Cody froze. 

He must have misheard. 

But then he thawed out, warming with adrenaline, unable to believe the indiscretion. The General _had_ recently encountered a Mandalorian—the hologram of an anonymous terrorist sporting a T-visor was sitting in his pocket, and it formed the entire pretence for their visit. _Why for all the dead stars mention the Prime Clone now?_

The towering painting of Duchess Satine suddenly held great interest for Cody as he distanced himself and his Fett face as far from Almec as possible.

“Jango Fett was a common bounty hunter,” Almec replied quickly. “How he acquired that armor is beyond me.”

Cody tried not to smile—the painting wasn’t _that_ engrossing. It was a convenient defamation, and Cody didn’t even like Jango. Every objectionable Mandalorian could be just a common bounty hunter until proven otherwise. 

Before the General could ask any more awkward questions, the royal retinue entered the hall and the Duchess’s clear, patrician voice immediately filled it. 

“Well, Master Kenobi. My shining Jedi Knight, to the rescue once again.” The look she levelled at the General was positively glacial. Cody reconsidered his impression of this mission as a social call. 

She ascended her dais, nose first, trailed by a tremulous advisor, bundled up as if dressed to receive her chilly sarcasm. The Duchess herself wore the same blue-green gown from the portrait—probably a symbolic robe of state, although it wasn’t particularly ornate. The mosaic behind her throne illuminated in her presence, like a neon light that said _open for very costly business._

“After all these years you’re even more beautiful than ever,” Kenobi began. 

“Kind words from a man who accuses me of treachery,” she replied. 

“I would never accuse you of personal wrongdoing, Duchess. However, a Separatist saboteur attacked one of our Republic cruisers—a _Mandalorian_ saboteur.”

Kenobi stepped forward and activated a brief holoclip of the terrorist. Cody had seen it a hundred times and would've liked to forget how many hundreds of men the shitstain had killed. He watched the Duchess instead. She looked troubled, but it slipped away like cloud passing over snow.

“You must be mistaken,” Almec said. Cody braced himself for some more _common bounty hunter_ logic and wasn’t disappointed. “No Mandalorian would engage in such violence, not anymore. Where is this prisoner now?”

“He took his own life, rather than submit to questioning,” replied Kenobi. “I know these commandos fought in many wars, often against the Jedi—”

“Every one of my people is as trustworthy as I am,” the Duchess cut in. The quivering advisor tried to intercede, without success. “Clearly, your investigation was ordered because _the Senate_ is eager to intervene in our affairs!”

“My investigation was ordered by the _Jedi_ Council.” 

The Duchess glanced at Cody, who hoped he looked credible enough, and much of her righteous fury fell from her flowered tresses. “I stand corrected. General Kenobi, perhaps you’d like to introduce me to your companion?” 

She extended one royal hand, and a slight upward gesture said it was not a suggestion. A tableaux of romance, worthy of a classic holodrama, unfolded when Kenobi approached her throne and took her hand. It was more genuine than his usual chivalric overtures, and even Cody felt it wasn’t just an effect of the light. He took a deep, calming breath and tried for earnest serenity as he joined them. 

“Duchess, my Padawan, Kote,” Kenobi said.

Cody bowed low. 

“This is not Anakin,” the Duchess observed, matter-of-factly, without pleasantry, and before Cody had even straightened up again. There was a lot of ambiguous familiarity in that statement. Cody waited, sweat prickling on his nape, for the other boot to drop. 

“Of course not. Anakin is no longer my apprentice. He passed his trials and passed out of my direct supervision,” the General replied. He left off the _as you well know_ that was so obvious in his tone. 

They both stared at him. Cody had to say something. “I lost my Master, your … ladyship.” _Was that right?_ “I’ve been assigned to Master Kenobi for the remainder of my training. Or else it’s the AgriCorps for me.” 

“Indeed.” The Duchess wasn’t just looking at him, she was _studying_ him, like he was helmeted and her eyes were casting around for the right place to land. But he was bare-faced, and probably blushing, and her brow grew firm with disapproval. “Indeed,” she repeated, “I fail to see how the AgriCorps is a more unbefitting prospect for you than military leadership. Farming is an honest and honorable profession. You would do better there.”

Her words were cryptic and unnerving in the way of Jedi Masters; but if she knew something, she had royal restraint to equal them and said nothing more. Cody had been sure the game was up entirely. He had to stop himself from sighing in relief. It was exhausting, really, not wearing a bucket. 

“I understand the palace’s water garden has been refurbished,” Kenobi said abruptly. “If Kote may await us there, would your Highness be so kind as to walk with me?” 

The Duchess took his arm, merely gesturing for Almec to assume responsibility for Cody, and the pairs parted ways. 

“I’m surprised you don’t yet hold a military command,” Almec said, as he turned with Cody down the passage beside the Duchess’s portrait, leading them deeper into the palace. “We’ve received reports of Padawans as young as fourteen given entire regiments.” 

Untethered from the General, Marshal Commander Cody suddenly grew very annoyed at playing dress-up. He decided the politician should field some provoking questions of his own—nothing a Republic soldier might ask, in case Almec’s recollection of _reports_ gave him a sudden moment of clarity, but just enough to fill in some gaps in Cody’s geopolitical education. 

“I was a latecomer to the Temple. I’m still learning the ropes. Forgive me, but your moon and the other side of your planet seem very lush. Why hunker down in a wasteland?” That would be especially callous coming from a Jedi, and Cody waited for Almec’s fine feathers to ruffle. 

“Mandalorian iron. All of the mines are here. It is our heritage and our way of life.”

“Expensive stuff?” 

“It is resistant to lightsabers,” Almec offered, pointedly. “I would have thought its properties common knowledge in the Temple.” 

“Like I said, remedial learner. Are there any settlements elsewhere?” _Besides the dead ones._

“Nothing more than roving clans and shantytowns and the MandalMotors factory. Fuel is easier to come by in the north.” Almec ushered Cody into a square chamber formed by walls of waterfalls and filled with equally quadrangular shrubbery. “Enjoy the garden, Padawan Kote. Alert a guard if you require anything.” 

Cody bowed his thanks and sat down with wry satisfaction. _Well, he toes the party line like a Trandoshan ballerina._ Almec was a classic politician, full of selfish rhetorical fixations like _our warriors_ and _our moon_ that obfuscated the fact that beyond Sundari’s people and Mandalore’s sole satellite, there was an entire diaspora of warriors spread across dozens of planets and moons that put the lie to his claims. And you didn’t have to be a disillusioned carbon-copy Mandalorian like Cody to see it.

It was ironic: if Almec _really_ wanted to dispel the average opinion of Mandalorians—a bunch of trigger-fingered troublemakers who washed their hands of ancient feuds every couple centuries, only to rehash them in the middle of someone else’s fight, when the blood was up and some Old Mythosaur didn’t like the tilt of Jaig Bird’s helmet—he and his government would have to stop sitting on their neutral backsides, bolt some cannons onto their swish ships, and put them into the air in service of the Republic.

Cody allowed himself to nod off to this fantasy. He was on Jedi time, and sending a signal out to the closest Third Systems deck for a daily download of troop movements, requests for reinforcements, Rex’s whereabouts, and the latest on the taming of the blurgg in the _Negotiator_'s repair hangar, would compromise his cover. Being off-duty _and_ off-comms was, for any clone, perhaps a once-in-an-accelerated-lifetime event. So he dozed. 

Some time later, the unfamiliar chirp of a wristcomm roused him. “Commander, where are you?” came the General’s tinny voice. 

Cody scrubbed his tired face without thinking and was relieved not to find yellow residue on his hands. “Still in the garden.” He nearly added _sir_ but stopped short, unsure if Kenobi had slipped up with the alias. 

“There’s been an assassination attempt. The Duchess is unharmed, but meet me at the dock as soon as you can. We need to debrief.”

Cody felt a twinge of guilt for napping, before recalling that he’d more than once interrupted Commander Tano’s _meditation_ mid-snore. It was a Padawan prerogative. As for not hearing anything ... well. Assassinations could be very quiet. “I’m on my way.” 

When he arrived at the docks, he found Kenobi leaning against his Ectis and gazing abstractedly at a rotating hologram in his hand. It was a sigil of some kind, triangular and indistinct, but almost identical to one Cody had seen stamped on the odd helmet. 

“Death Watch,” Kenobi prompted. 

“Sir?”

“It’s a fringe clan—well, faction. This is their symbol: one very angry artist’s rendition of a shriek-hawk.” Kenobi palmed off the holo and pocketed it. “We thought they’d been largely dispersed and deradicalized. Are you familiar with them?”

“No,” Cody said truthfully, determined to press Boil about the vocalists of his _favorite band_ and if they were in the habit of distributing extremist literature. 

Mandalorian politics were more hopelessly splintered than a carvanium droid. Cody had been used to thinking of Mandalorians as the commando sergeants and everyone they left behind. Now he had another distinction to make: the New Mandalorians and the Terrorists. _What if Jango had been one of those?_

“They must have gone to ground after the Clan Wars, and now in this age of violent opportunity they are re-emerging,” Kenobi continued. “The failed assassin was a member and a Concordian. The Duchess will accompany body to the moon, and we will accompany her. If there is a secret Mandalorian army to be found, it’s likely there.”

“So now they admit their purge wasn’t so successful after all? Did no one ever tell Almec you can’t really call endex until you’ve counted the bodies?” 

“Steady, Cody. It wasn’t an extermination. Concordia was established centuries ago, long before Satine’s family came to power, and the clans have prospered there, House Vizsla in particular. Not as peacefully as one may have hoped, but this _is_ Mandalore. They sponsored a great deal of violence against the Duchess’s rule in the past, but Governor Vizsla was a school friend of hers. His aspirations and associations are very Coruscanti.”

If that was all the Governor had to recommend him, Cody was even less inclined for an introduction. He was getting cagey about his face again. He also wanted to see these northern shanty towns. Sixty had gone completely dark, and a very sudden, very desperate hunch gnawed at Cody, telling him it would be the perfect place for an Alpha to go to ground. This assignment wouldn’t have to be such a waste of time after all… 

“Let me recce MandalMotors, sir, and we’ll RV afterwards. Where Jedi and Mandalorians are concerned, it seems two’s a crowd.” 

“No, a regrouping on Concordia would be the bigger threat. That’s our priority.” 

_A bigger threat to the Republic or to his ex-squeeze?_ Cody tried again. “I’ve heard it said that Mandalorians have a long memory and a short fuse. The Duchess’s fuse was pretty short and she’s the pacifist party.”

“Have courage.”

“I’m not afraid for myself,” Cody said, almost offended. “I’m afraid of a diplomatic dust-up if their long memory proves better than our intel. Sir, why did you ask about Jango?”

The question was out before he could swallow it back, and just as quickly, Cody dismissed his regret. He’d had his suspicions; but now he was slowly coming to terms with the fact that the Republic’s due diligence into the Grand Army began and ended with the man standing in front of him. His faith in Kenobi was boundless, a good cadet’s prime directive; but honesty would have reminded Cody to be comfortable with that. 

“Idle curiosity.” Kenobi smirked. “And we know that’s _one_ secret army they won’t take credit for.” 

“I doubt he was being honest with you.”

“Of course not, he’s a politician.” Kenobi crossed his arms at the braces, his hands gripping his elbows, the very picture of Jedi uncertainty, tense and still. Cody knew it well. “Satine didn’t recognize you,” he said decidedly, when he noticed he was being appraised. 

“I think she recognized _something,_ sir.” If not a Republic military asset, then the spitting image of someone her government would like to forget. It was like playing sabacc and oscillating between two equally shit hands before the Shift. 

“She didn’t,” Kenobi repeated, this time like a man trying to convince himself—he certainly could have no hope of convincing Cody. Sixty had made sure of that. 

The General toyed with his beard, evidently troubled. Another tell. “I’ll spare you a meeting with the Governor,” he said finally. “But make a false jump to Coruscant, scramble your signature, and follow us in. Do an aerial recce and then wait out of sight for my signal. The Duchess doesn’t have to know. That will save her some embarrassment should you be caught.”

“Very well, sir.” 

Cody didn’t ask the obvious question—how he’d talk down an incident involving a trespassing Padawan—but he figured that wasn’t his problem. He had enough of his own, real ones, baked into his very flesh and bones. 

Jango Fett could have been the commonest scum-for-hire the Prime Minister of Mandalore had ever heard of. But he had heard of him.

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**Holo Transmission between Death Watch Camp, Concordia and Serenno**

“I cannot understand why the arrival of these Jedi doesn’t upset you. You promised to support the Death Watch forces so we could overthrow the Duchess Satine and her weak, pacifist government.”

“And I intend to keep my promise.”

“But how? If the Republic interferes now, Death Watch will not be able to take over the system. We don’t have the numbers.” 

“Consider, once the Senate orders peace-keeping troops to Mandalore, the people will be surrounded by a military presence. Most distasteful. They will rebel. Especially when they see the truth.” 

“What truth?”

“Having confirmed the rumors myself, I can tell you. An erstwhile member of your rival sect allied with the Republic—Jango Fett. He sold his genetic template to create a Mandalorian army. _In secret_.” 

“... And Satine has … been implicated in this? And the Jedi fell for it? So much for cosmic omniscience.”

“Not quite. I’m speaking of the Grand Army of the Republic.”

“The _clones?_” 

“Yes.” 

“Jango Fett … produced the clones?!”

“Yes. It would seem your movement has greater problems than Sundari’s sloth.”

“If what you say is true … action against the Duchess is more imperative than ever. I … I don’t know what Fett set in motion, but he could play the long game. He still has adherents on every moon, and in the hearts of the deluded diaspora.”

“Not a common bounty hunter, then?”

“Yes and no. Chief of the dishonourable mercenaries. They must have been biding their time since he sold out to the highest bidder in the galaxy.”

“You may need Separatist support against this Mandalorian horde.”

“One jump at a time, Count. Blood doesn’t make a Mandalorian, especially the blood of a traitor. But if Fett’s spawn rise up to crush his enemies … Sundari will burn, Death Watch will be finished, and every clan, every planet in the system, from Krownest to Kalevala, will kneel to Keldabe on a Republic leash. We must move quickly.”

“How fortunate then, that the Jedi have arrived to lend credence to your concerns.”

“Agreed. We’ll rally the clans to our cause against this larger threat, and our insurgency will grow stronger.”

“Yes, and Satine will fall.”  
  
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The Alphas said they sometimes had dreams: dreams of camps and cantinas and chains, with impressions of places more vivid than any holobook lesson, too familiar for even a thousand identical simulations. _Jango’s dreams._

As the rustic din of a bivouac thrummed against his consciousness, Cody thought this might be one of those. 

He was uncomfortable, lying on a flat, ribbed surface, and a singed smell that was too earthy to be proton fuel tickled his nose. The Mando’a rumbling around him heightened his suspicion. Cody understood the conversation, begrudgingly.

_“... some jedi snooping around. That another one?”_

_“So it would seem.”_

_“Are you going to get this one to talk or just make him squeal?”_

_“Fuck off, Saxon.”_

A flapping tarp muffled a sarcastic _my lady,_ but one of the voices had cut through Cody’s mental fog like broken glass. It belonged to a woman, and one close enough to touch. He’d encountered so few of those that it seemed like something worth snapping awake for. 

He blinked his eyes open with effort, and took in a low and shadowed ceiling. The weight of his head told him he’d probably been under the influence of drugs, not dreams. Impossible to say for how long. A clone’s metabolism could eat through most garden-variety sedatives between five and thirty standard minutes. That didn’t leave much time to go from idling in a hyperspace ring between Mandalore and its moon, contemplating insubordination and the apocryphally toxic nature of bio-chips, to waking up in a dark, unfamiliar prefab. Cody’s normally faultless memory kicked out entirely in the space between the two moments as he tried to recall what had happened. 

It distressed him to think he might have pressed the big red button after all, and somehow been intercepted on the way back to the fleet. It distressed him more to consider the likelier scenario: that whatever the circumstances, he was banged up in some Force-forsaken Mandalorian outpost after losing contact with the General, and his captors were terrorists or mercenaries. Pick your poison.

Cody tried to pull himself together. His arms and legs were very, _very_ heavy. Something else tugged at those, something much more tangible— 

Like a carbine barrel that was suddenly in his face, levelled by pair of green eyes, bright as a plasma bolt. 

Nothing like adrenaline for cooking off downers and focusing the mind. Cody’s focused immediately on the fact that he was bound at the wrists and ankles. The woman threatening his good looks was probably behind it. She looked like business—the mean and unscrupulous kind that stole your creds and charged interest for the time it took to reach into your pocket. All the color that should have been in her face glowed in her fiery hair, cut with severity along her jaw.

“Who the fuck are you,” Cody and the woman snarled at each other in different tongues.

The woman cocked one red brow at her blaster. “You first," she prompted, switching to Basic.

Her finger was resting on the guard. Cody took a few seconds to glance around and assess the situation. His biceps were strung up and held taut behind his head, forcing him to crane his neck to get a good look at anything. Dumped in a pile on the dirt floor were his robes and his Westar, sprinkled with the remains of his wrist comm. He wondered if Kenobi had logged his his coordinates before she’d killed his tracker; then he wondered about Kenobi’s own whereabouts and forced himself to move on. Mind in the moment, said his training. 

To his left, beyond the woman’s waist, some tattered fabric hung from the wall. Cody squinted. It might have been a ceremonial dolman, to judge from the size. Jango had had one. He wore it for the odd review if a strong officer class was passing-out, or if the longnecks requested him to add gravity to some proceedings, but he wouldn’t blink to sling Boba in it. And the first time Cody had seen a strill, a commando sergeant was bent over it, using his dolman to towel off the worst of a downpour from its thick fur. 

This dolman was free of creases and strill hair. It hung flaccidly instead, displaying the silhouette of a diving _jai’galaar._

Death Watch. 

So, he’d made it dirtside on Concordia—where, he supposed, this mysterious woman had intercepted him. Her armor bore no identifying marks except a black and white sigil on her spaulder that Cody didn’t recognize. 

She gave his cheek an impatient nudge with the barrel. “Answer the question.” 

Time for evasive maneuvers. There'd be ample opportunity to dust off his RTI quals when things inevitably got physical. He was roped up and spread-eagled on top of a cargo crate, wearing nothing but his skivvies. The woman knew what she was doing—Cody was going nowhere fast—but at least this wasn’t some tailor-made torture den like the one Seventeen had landed in.

“I thought it was obvious,” Cody finally replied. _The galaxy’s worst sham, in fact. What’d be next—Kenobi rigged up as a bounty hunter?_ It would have been smarter for the General to _negotiate_ away the presence of a Republic clone than for Cody to fight his way out of espionage, by every galactic definition of the word. People fell for the dumb trooper act all the time. 

The woman set her carbine down, fiddled with her belt, and dangled Cody’s prop saber above his nose. 

“You are _no_ Jedi.” A slim vibroblade snapped from her gauntlet and with threatening precision, she shaved some yellow paint from his cheek. “No Kiffar, either.” 

“And you are _no_ lady,” Cody countered, his skin smarting from the blade. 

Grief ghosted across her face, almost drawing her backwards as it passed. It would have been imperceptible to most. But Cody noticed everything, even when he didn’t have to. 

The woman wasn’t shaken for long. She rallied—enough to grab his sack and twist it with extreme prejudice. “You’re right,” she said, as her exposed gauntlet blade sliced down his inner thigh. “I’m not.”

Cody inhaled, his torso seized up, and, reflexively, he tried to bring his leg up to snap her neck behind his knee. But the ropes allowed him nothing. He shuddered impotently on top of the crate, straining against the pain. He’d learned long ago never to shut his eyes against it; Sixty always said that was a good way to get yourself cooked.

_You don’t have the luxury of dying ignorant. Your helmet will scream at you when someone’s got a lock, your HUD will pick up every threat—and every line of escape. You keep your eyes open and you might just live._

Cody wasn’t sure he wanted to anticipate what came next. The woman let go of his balls, but bashed the saber hilt into his scar. He also wasn’t sure he had a choice about shutting his eyes when the blow instantly doubled the weight of his head.

“Now tell me what business a _Fett_ has on Concordia.” 

Cody was in awful, tongue-biting pain, but the way she spat out the name—in the same degrading tone people usually reserved for _clone_—was impossible to miss. 

_She doesn’t recognize me. She recognizes Jango._

Cody’s reserve had paid off: she’d shown her hand first. Not that it mean much if you weren’t playing the same game. His head was still spinning, and it shook loose a cloud of regrets: if only he’d asked Sixty more questions; if only he hadn’t taken Kenobi on blind faith; if only Kenobi hadn’t taken the _Grand Army_ on blind faith… 

Well, the track to the sarlacc may have been paved with good intentions, but it was littered with shoddy risk assessments.

The misunderstanding wouldn’t buy him sympathy, but it might buy him time. The woman had dug the hilt deep into his jagged temple. He smelt the tang of blood. 

“And in league with the Jedi, too,” she went on, above Cody’s silence. Her bob underlined the contempt in her jaw as she shook her head, hurled the saber at the wall, and spat in his face. “_Osi’yaim._ Wait till the boss gets here.” 

Cody glared up at her through gummy lashes, almost like he’d been frosted. It made him a little fresh. “The _boss_ is probably going to die. You might get promoted. Congratulations.”

Lieutenant didn’t like that at all. She braced one hand just above his low briefs, her gloves snagging a little on his black hairs. With her other arm, she made a show of housing the vibroblade, only to shove her wrist deep between his thighs— 

And prime her gauntlet right at his hole.

Cody clenched up. 

“We have Kenobi.” Her voice was level, almost disinterested, like capturing a Jedi General was as natural as the weather. Maybe even a minor inconvenience. Cody found it hard convince himself she was lying. “So I’ll ask you again. What are you? A brother? A son?”

“Something like that,” Cody hedged, squeezing his cheeks harder. 

They’d never prepared for this, because practice alone could irrevocably damage _the product._ Ball-busting couldn’t hurt more than a sterilized soldier’s pride and the Alphas knew it. But the manual was as far as he’d ever gotten with this kind of sexual torture—most sexual anything. And this woman was threatening what little experience he did have. His concentration cracked around memories of brothers trying to push in with too little attention, back when they were too young and horny to know better.

He pulled up on the ropes around his wrists, wriggling under her palm to put all of two inches between his hole and her haptic wrath. 

Her fist just followed close behind. “It’s a shitty way to bleed out,” she reminded him. 

Cody swallowed. Time was up. His rank might save him for a while, until these terrorists learned how worthless a half-million-credit commander really was. Or how little he had to say for himself. There was every possibility that she’d waste him immediately and get a head start on her unfinished business with the Fetts. 

Cody liked his shebs enough to chance it. 

“CC-2224. Marshal Commander. Grand Army of the Republic,” he declared, flatly. He kept his name. His name was his—it didn’t even belong to the army. “Anything you do to me now will be a war crime. And I’d be fucking thrilled to extradite you for it.”

What the woman did next surprised him, but he’d seen enough corpses to recognize the reaction: retracting the hands, hitching the breath, stepping back a fraction, like death might catch. Cody hoped it was shock and not disgust. And then he wondered why he gave a single shit. 

“... a _clone?_”

If she’d been looking at him, Cody would’ve stared at her for every second, challenging her to get as comfortable with that fact as he was. But her gaze, like her mind apparently, was very far away. He wiped his brow against the insides of his arms as best he could. He needed to stop saliva and blood from seeping into his eyes, making everything pointlessly miserable and distorted. 

The silence coiled between them. She had a striking face. Cody wouldn’t need perfect recall to remember it. 

She had a scar too, probably older than he was and largely superficial now. Unlike the raw horror rent down his skull, throbbing with renewed hurt. Cody wondered that someone could look so numb before such keen pain. But he supposed that’s what his own face did when he saw brothers mangled in ways that defied every attempt of desperate medics to scoop them onto a stretcher, much less put them back together again. The Force didn’t share feelings with clones, and the war gave them helmets to hide behind. Small blessings. 

When the woman finally spoke, her voice staggered, tripping over the only explanation she could arrive at. “Fett was working for the Republic?” 

Cody doubted Jango would’ve put it that way. But he didn’t have to say anything, much less debate supply-chain politics. With her fist gone, cool air had swept into his damp briefs and he realized how much he’d been sweating. He was also half-hard and that really rattled him. _What’s with the nerves, Codes?_ His whole existence belonged to someone else. It was more viscerally terrifying to have a vibroblade at your pucker, sure, but a really dumb moment to panic about your helplessness for the first time.

“Who was Fett working for?” she asked again, conversationally enough—except she was also slicing open his skivvies, taking some of his curls as she went.

Cody let his sore head and tense neck fall back against the crate. He didn’t watch as she tore open the fabric down one thigh and then the other. But he jumped an inch when she popped something cold and blunt at his entrance. This time, she didn’t hesitate.

“The Senate?” she suggested over Cody’s hiss, as she pushed whatever-it-was in, bone dry and determined. 

“Kuat?” came a second, ass-tearing sting. 

Then a third. “Keldabe?”

It must have been relevant, Cody reckoned, this ranking of threats. Three metal pokers for the backwater shantytown on the scraggy side of the planet. Not one for Sundari.

It was hard, though. Hard to get inside her head, hard to focus inside his own. Especially when she pulled all three rods out at once and thrust them in again. His eyes watered, congealing with leftover blood and sweat and spit. Everything from top to bottom stung horribly and his eyes just welled up more. 

Suddenly Cody was seven again, lying on an examination table, wondering if it would be this hypo or the next that terminated him, and willing his stupid erection to go away. _That_ was only supposed to happen when humans wanted to make babies—but Sixty told him he couldn’t, and the longnecks didn’t like it when it showed. _Keep it to yourself._

Damp all over, Cody began to shiver. Concordia was mild at best. He turned his head one way to rub his eyes against his skin, then the other, modulating his breathing all the while. He also tried to be academic about what was in his ass, mentally scanning through all the tacticool bolt-ons he’d ever seen in the QM’s cache. There was no satisfactory answer to her question, anyway. Fett probably worked for credits not causes, and that sort of mercurial attitude only confused terrorists. 

“You _are_ a perfect little army brat, Commander,” the woman jeered. “No stranger to keeping silent and opening wide.” She stretched him with a twist of her hand as she pulled out, and Cody saw three wrist-rocket flechettes slipped back into a belt box. She’d spared him the business end, for now. 

Then her green-eyed malice fell upon the bantha in the room. 

“And since you’re standing so nicely to attention...”

She produced a long length of cord from another box.

Cody’s cock, fully fattened and erect, twitched.

_An involuntary muscular reaction to stimuli._

It twitched again and Cody tried to grapple with this bodily betrayal. What stimuli? He wasn’t in to any of this, this wasn’t _him._ This went well beyond the wardroom joke of passing the binders round after the bottle and seeing who went still and who got handsy. His nerves were wracked and his limbic system frayed. He wasn’t in _control._ And it was sending him on an alarming feedback loop he couldn’t jettison from. 

_It’s just your brain on stims, vod. Without the stims. Endorphins are a helluva spice._

Cody eyes rolled back to black when the woman took his stiffie in her gloved hands. He hissed, the sound like dampeners as he settled into acceptance of what was about to happen to him. 

She began by coaxing his balls down. They’d made a run for it up into his body, and she was going to restrain them too: one squeeze, two squeeze, three squeeze, _pull,_ and the rope was slotted firmly underneath his sack. The material was different than the knots around his wrists and ankles. Worse. When she cinched a loop around his base, Cody felt every single curl tugged along every single inch, a great gathered sting that burned from his taint up. _Much_ worse. 

“You don’t have to fight this,” she said, chillingly to a man who was in no position to fight at all beyond keeping his tongue behind his teeth. She’d have to cut that out of him, and more besides, before he’d level with her. The cord biting into his groin threatened to do exactly that. “I’m told this can be nice. _I_ can be nice.” 

Slowly and with increasing pressure, his swollen, throbbing nards were separated from his body and from each other. She made pass after pass and loop after loop with the cord, until they felt like overripe dewberries looked. Ready to burst from their stretched and desiccated skins. 

“Do you know a Reau?” she asked. 

When he didn’t respond, she jerked on the remaining length of cord. Cody had the most appalling sensation of being separated from his package. He gasped a reedy gasp. 

“I asked you a question, Commander. Do you know an Isabet Reau?” 

Something flicked hard against one of his testicles, and the live wire of pain that shot through his abdomen confirmed that they were _definitely_ still attached. Even his toes stung. He’d never felt anything like it. 

No, Cody didn’t know anyone named Reau. Not that he’d admit it. It would only set a precedent for answers which she’d probably ignore, hellsbent as she was on treating him like a hostile. There was no talking down someone once they had you trussed up like a mott and had already skewered you for having a face they didn’t like. 

She lobbed more names at him. After each one, a lethris finger snapped against his tender scrotal skin, as if any reaction was more satisfying than none, Cody’s winces of pain validating whatever it was she already suspected. 

“What about a Bralor? — Auren? — Yanka? — Gilamar? — Riidyck? — Kuunan? — Priest?”

One or two names set off distant flares: commando sergeants back on Kamino. But Cody was a different model. For all his rank, his instructors had been droids, longnecks, more droids, disembodied voices, Sixty, and the occasional sergeant, always called _Sarge._ Most of the names meant nothing to him. Still, Cody committed them to memory, filed away indelibly into his mind next to _Castration, Likelihood of._

He didn’t dare look down. A pressure front could roll into Tipoca City and he’d probably feel it on his turgid dick. If she’d stabbed a stim into his tip, his cock could not have felt more like its own distinct being, complete with its own Force and gravitational shadows. It hurt and it ... didn’t; he wanted it to stop—he really, _really_ did—and yet each sting lit up something in his Fett-fucked brain. Cody had no way to explain it to himself except that he’d never experienced sensations like this before, or at least not in this order. 

When she’d finished handing over a persons-of-interest list, she shook up the program and started on the open-ended questions. 

“Why wouldn’t you meet the Duchess openly?” 

“What were you looking for? _Who_ were you looking for?”

“Who sent you to Sundari?”

“Where are the other clones waiting?”

Maybe she thought he lacked the right encouragement. Maybe she just wanted the exercise. She stepped away. Her boots crunched loud on the dirt, and Cody opened his eyes just as she picked up something shiny from the ground. 

He really wished he hadn’t. 

There was no point anticipating a forehand blow with a lightsaber hilt to his angry cock. It was going to be many orders of magnitude more painful than he could ever imagine. 

Cody squeezed his eyes shut, ducking his face into his bicep, fisting what rope he could above his head, and held fast, desperately trying to recall places without pain. A clone’s life didn’t leave many. His thoughts just rolled to the medbay, and how difficult this would be to explain to Hornet. 

“Who was Jango Fett working for?” 

The million-credit question again—this time with the money shot. 

The hilt connected squarely with his cock, rooted firmly as it was by a fist of cord. _Thwack._ A spasm of hurt wracked Cody from limb to fucking limb, one great galvanized spike driving into his abdomen. 

“Who were you _really_ meeting on Mandalore?”

She whacked him again. And again. His dick would bob one way, reeling from a blow, and the hilt was always there to meet him on the rebound. In between the scream of every nerve and the panicked drumbeat in his ears, a rational thought fought its way to the surface. _She’s not very good at this._ He couldn’t answer if she didn’t relent enough to let him breathe. 

“Are you meeting Shysa?”

Then, with a swing that rushed downward over his torso, all breath was slapped straight out of him. Metal met bone. Cody felt hollowed out, his innards replaced by a dry, ballooning pain. 

“Are you meeting Fenn Shysa?” she repeated with the same precise stroke, right into his pubic bone, at the join between the cord and his crotch. 

Cody struggled for air. Hyperventilation was kicking in. You had to stave off the panic, first, stop the mind churning with stressful thoughts—thoughts like, _what if she misses and my balls splatter the walls._ Divide and conquer the pain, Sixty would say. 

The ropes gnawing into his skin, chewing into his tendons; a thousand nerves threading into his bad shoulder, each threatening to snap; blood vessels splitting across his temple, swelling his head; cord choking his shaft, starving it of oxygen, destroying vital tissues; metal bruising bone… 

Senses split, Cody tried to hold them apart and let her last question rattle around in his brain, taking up room. 

_Pilot instructor._ Fenn was a pilot instructor on Kamino—that much Cody remembered. Was that red-headed cockjockey, that freckled journeyman of the Sergeants’ Wing, some kind of political subversive now? Was Shysa even his second name? He could never keep birthers straight. Too many names, too much backstory. Like this psychotic piece of work. There was interrogation, and there was interrogation; there was revenge, and there was whatever the fuck she wanted from him. 

The woman might have walloped his shaft another two or twenty times; but the drama on the crate finally stilled when she placed a gloved palm on his heaving navel and held it there. “Shhh, easy, Commander, easy,” she said, with all the benevolence of a viper. “No more questions. You just might survive this—I’m changeable like that—and I have a message for Walon Vau, in case you do. He’ll be with Shysa.”

Over everything, over the pounding ground-zero of hurt that was his groin, came a delicate sensation. It was her lethris finger on his meatus, holding him at a slant like she was teeing up a place kick. Whatever team he was taking this for, Cody vowed they’d be feeling his hard, Republic-issued boot if he ever came across them. 

“Tell him, the Bloodflower and the Bitterborn send their regards.” 

The blow was unlike anything else. She swung at the cords between his shaft and his sack, like she meant to cleave them apart, and him, too. His damn tailbone sang from the force of it, and instant, excoriating agony again became the sum of Cody’s life. He bellowed into his arm, unable to swallow the anguish, not this time. It was a devastating slip, and his blood ran hot with rage. 

The overwhelming pain took a while to subside back into a generalized ache. At some point, Cody became aware of a cold caress up and down his shaft, smarting and bloodshot from abuse. Her gloved fingers almost lulled him into damn gratitude; it was like she’d stuck a spanner into some primal region of his brain, toying with his circuits like a vindictive astromech. 

“I’m impressed, Commander. _Ori’mandokar._ That took a while. Some of these men … they’re so nunashit about losing their seed.”

It was a strange turn in the one-sided conversation. Infertility was the last thing on Cody’s mind when his dense sack felt fit to spawn a second grand army. The dissonance between her vicious strikes and her gloved strokes made him dizzy with … something. His tight balls grew tighter and threatened to pop like fucking dets. His hips canted off the crate, into her hand. Cody felt his orgasm build, a warm finger of pressure pushing inside his navel and deeper towards what was left of his cock— 

The woman smacked his cockhead with her palm. Cody clogged up, a blunt misfire in the barrel. _Oh fuck—oh fucking sithshit—she’s_ very _good at this._

“Mandalore is a womb, an environment, not something cooked up between a man’s pale thighs,” she continued. 

Cody, who now measured time in pulsing throbs, twitched with flagging patience. She began again, gloves off. Her slow and featherlight touch, skin on velvety skin, was nothing like the full-fisted gusto of a brother, and with it, she edged him closer to the brink again, calling up his come like a mystic. 

“They’ve probably sterilized you anyway. Lab-grown Republic meat.” 

And she stifled his shot a second time. 

Something bubbled weakly from his tip—_please, for all Force-blessed mercy, don’t be blood_—but he was as uncomfortable and engorged as ever. How long would she keep this up before he became _Exhibit A_ in Hornet’s shore safety brief about the dangers of erections lasting longer than four hours? 

Cody twisted his face into his numb bicep, for all the nothing it would do. He sighed, hoped the Force wasn’t too holy to notice his perverse plight, and wondered what kind of time Kenobi was having.

“_Manda,_ you had to grow up fast,” she observed quietly, running her fingers along Cody’s thigh—the one not matted with blood. Her attention finally strayed from his inflamed junk, her hands trailing up his stomach and chest until her fingers flared out across the backsides of his arms. Cody knew the lines they traced well. He’d only just stopped aching when he hit the front lines; then all the joints that had been growing were beaten down again. Every brother had limbs laced with faint stretch-marks. It was a minor cosmetic flaw, not worth the creds to engineer out when your product was covered head-to-toe in armor and determined to deface themselves anyway. 

The woman had come around the crate, bending over his right arm. The shadow of her fell over his face, which he kept blank and tilted as she petted his broad chest, fingering scars she hadn’t yet opened and groping him for tender parts to pulverize. That’s what he told himself, at least; it was easier to stomach than any alternative. 

“Let me tell you a story, _ad’ika,_” she said softly, close enough that he felt her breath on his clammy skin. “A long time ago, on a planet far far away, a princess wanted to run away with a rogue and his band of merry mercenaries. If she’d known he was going _dar’manda_ to wank out a bunch of nerf-fed knock-offs, she’d have rubbed him out.” 

Cody didn’t try to mask his snort of disbelief. My Lady here could probably grease a Wookiee through a garbage vent, but she’d come some way down in the galaxy, now just an underling in a two-bit terrorist cell.

“Laugh it up, clone.” She unsheathed her vibroblade and laid it against his throat, snaring her fingers into his hair so he couldn’t ruin a clean slice. “I could make amends starting with you.” 

Beneath her blade, Cody’s blood pounded. She wouldn’t do it, he figured: there was still _the boss_ left to meet. But she was also capricious, and his end could be every bit as glorious as little Kote dreamed: some offering to Mandalore’s bloodthirsty gods, who’d shine brightly upon a Republic invasion and all the havoc that would bring. 

Her blade slid home. _Shukkk._ “It’d be almost the same…” she mused, slowly stalking back towards his lower half.

Her silence janked Cody’s nerves so badly that he had to look, just to save himself from his flighty imagination, starved of certainties and blood. He had willpower enough to glance only where her boots had halted; a glance at his crotch would be a horrific mistake. 

She was just standing there, jaw tense and brow bunched in studious regard. Their eyes met. Hers flashed over a noxious smile and she started prying off her groin plates. “Mandalorian cunt wasn’t good enough for him. Let’s see how you like it.” The beskar dropped into the dirt, and when Cody shut his eyes again, she was fingering open a seamed flap between her legs. 

Dread washed over him. His chest tightened and flipped, like an egress dunk into cold shame. Except there’d be no escaping this. Even if he _could_ will himself to ejaculate—and he wanted to, he wanted to so fucking badly, though he was half-convinced it’d damage his junk beyond the help of bacta—she’d just twine her cruelty around him till he was ninety-percent cock, ten-percent man again. 

He’d never been with a woman. She was going to be the first, violating him as he lay there in agony. There’d be no swaggering into the wardroom or the mess, punching the air in cuntdrunk glee over the first darling girl he pulled; that wasn’t Cody’s style, but he suffered the theft of the chance all the same, somewhere deep, in a void where the rest of his life choices should have been. 

And underneath it all swirled a quieter discontent: _You’re scared. You’re scared because it might feel good. And what does that say about you?_

Maybe he could spill quickly. He tried to call up his usual bank of wank imagery—lekku on a bed of pendledown, dicks in colorful tits, Rex in those low-riding limmie shorts—but it all shredded against the ropes. However much he felt fit to burst, without the ability to touch, he couldn’t make himself shoot. Sometimes it was hard enough even with his hands: they had staying power and conditioning that told them not to. 

Cody never wanted another stiffie in his life, and it was looking like he wouldn't get one. 

His vision began to darken at the edges, the lamplight beyond his eyelids dimming as he tunnelled deeper into himself. Underneath him, the crate shook. The woman’s knees nestled on either side of his hips. The sudden grip of her hand around his erection made him heave, and he could feel the touch in his eyeballs. 

Careful not to overstimulate him, her bony fingers held him steady as his inflamed head made contact with a hot, solid surface. Cody panted, certain his dick was going to snap. If her body was made for this, it didn’t feel like it to him. Maybe this would be it. Maybe she would slick herself up against his tip and he’d burst and that would be that. 

Then she scooted up a little and pushed herself down over his shaft like a soggy thermal sock.

Cody’s oath of silence failed him again. He groaned like he’d been shot. He was enveloped in heat, his base squeezed further by the press of her body upon the rungs of cord. After the violence of earlier, Cody’s nerves clamored between the relief and the fresh intensity. _Pleasurable_ didn’t ring true. It was just ... too much. 

And it wasn’t like a brother at all. 

The woman rocked silently, the cord burying into his pubes and catching miserably in his curls. He was aware of rational thoughts, but only peripherally, like a visual feed from a brother’s HUD. A brother who wasn’t being fucked brainless. A brother who was sane and still in control. He stopped praying for Kenobi to intervene; Cody didn't want to be found like this, a strung-out wreck. 

He had a head full of Republic installation coordinates, Hex-missile launch codes, confidential strategy briefings, base security override sequences, and Kenobi’s room number at the Temple—he was a masterpiece of genetic engineering, mental fortitude, intellectual stamina, and physical endurance. 

He was a Marshal Commander. 

And a paramilitary terrorist, too lowly even for the GAR aggravated watchlist, just wanted to get a good fuck on him before she slotted him. He was six again. Lying on an examination table. _Sixty, what did I do wrong?_

Nothing. He just had that kind of face.

His orgasm curled thickly below his navel, sucking all sensation towards the moist clutch of the woman around his cock. Third time lucky, or so Cody fucking hoped. His abdomen clenched, and then he felt like he was being split open. He came, brutally hard. The force of it whited him out for a good minute, as if his entire self was being dragged off into hyperspace, nerve by nerve, groin first. If the woman hadn’t been there, he’d have painted the ceiling. 

Cody didn’t, _couldn’t_ think. He just rode those last seconds out, wallowing in a potent hormonal soup. 

Exhaustion pooled in his limbs, and once he’d come, he wanted more than anything to sleep. But the pressure on his crotch had not eased up. 

“That’s bad manners,” she tutted, sitting on him, refusing to let his tender dick slip free. 

It was no relief when she did. He still felt horrifically swollen. She shuffled forward, inch by inch, knees knocking against his ribs and tucking into his armpits. She grabbed his hair, twisting his face to meet hers. 

Then she slapped him, sharply. “Attention, CC-2224.” 

Cody’s eyes shot open, a reaction drilled into him. And he saw everything he didn’t want to remember. It was supposed to be a feature, their holographic memories; but everyone knew it was a glitch because of moments like these. 

Her besh was right in his face, almost close enough to lick. A bead of his own tepid come dripped onto his chin as he glared at her for using his number. 

Something carnal and instinctive made him to glance lower. She was as hairy as them. For some reason, he hadn’t expected that. Hairless people of every species were far more popular across every garrison and behind every cantina he’d ever seen; five months off Kamino and novelty still held wide appeal. Past the bush of hair, the flesh between her thighs was a series of flushed and swollen folds, pearly from his load.

“This is probably more your speed, army boy,” she said, forking a red lip of skin with two fingers and starting to rub. She was going to frost him, her juices mixed with his. “Your pretty mouth was made for sitting, but you might bite something I’ll miss.” 

His eyes held hers, defiantly, now that he was righteously mad and artificially hard, and not just jacked up on testosterone. And she glowered right back. She wanted his attention? She’d have it, and every goddamned memory that his face recalled and which she was pathetically trying to fuck away.

Her odor—unfamiliar, fungal, musky— coated his nose and throat. She probably hadn’t seen better than a portable sonic in months. Even worse, he could smell himself. Her green eyes grew dark and distant and her jaw slackened for the first time. Her wrist was a blur of movement in his peripheral.

She jerked forward, suddenly, and squirted their backwash across his tight-lipped mouth. 

With a terrorist creaming in his face, Cody was surprised he even heard it at all, but that was lifelong conditioning for you: the rumble of an earth-contained explosion. It had to be the General. Or Concordia’s mines weren’t abandoned after all. Or both. 

The woman noticed it too, craning in the direction of the sound. She hovered above him a minute more, until the wetness had grown cool and tacky on Cody’s skin. When she grabbed his face, it seeped along her fingers. She ducked in close. A manic smile cracked her pale cheeks. “That message was for you and only you, Commander Fett. Our little secret.”

Cody flinched when she reached for her belt. But he was left dumb when she merely cleaned him up with a greasy, oil-stained rag.

“That’s _marshal_ commander to you, bitch,” he couldn't help spitting at her false courtesy. 

The woman balled the rag in her palm. “I should gag you for that. But I’m a sucker for a man’s scream, and I’ve wanted to hear yours for years.” She climbed off the crate and fixed her seals, popping plates back on with the speed of someone comfortable in a second skin. Her beskar gripped her flightsuit like their armor hugged blacks. Cody thought of all the things they might have talked about over a fire, had she been willing to play nice. It was a lot to expect from a Mandalorian. 

And when she took the infernal cord in her hands, picking up speed as she gathered the loose ends around one hand, his opinion sunk from contempt to inveterate hatred. She might have cut him loose. She chose a different method, and pulled. 

The cord unspooled erratically, jerking his dick around as it did, ripping out hairs by the tips. An excruciating glut of blood rushed through his hypersensitive cock. His sheath, bruised and broken, felt like it was being skinned. 

Cody wouldn’t have wished those few seconds on Slick himself. His roar of pain thundered through his own skull like a freighter. He swore crap he hadn’t even heard of, incoherent with rage and scared shitless by the feeling that she’d torn his junk clean off. _They can replace it, graft on a new one courtesy of the charnel clones and some sad shiny who probably never got to use it— _

“What in all the kings-damned hells,” came a male voice, far too articulate to be Cody’s.

Cody glanced down, shakily—_don’t look at it, don’t look at it, don’t fucking look, cadet_. A pale man stood well beyond his knees next to the woman, cord dangling from her hands. With his long, angular face and fair hair, he could have been Almec’s relation. Not a son, but maybe an estranged nephew. He was kitted out in dark, dusky armor, and a dolman hung cooly over one shoulder. _The boss._

Though wracked to the marrow, Cody had adrenaline enough to spike his blood. His heart punched his ribs with worry. Where was the General? No lightsaber hung from the man’s belt, but as clues went, it wasn’t exactly auspicious. 

“We’re leaving, Bo. But by all means, don’t let me interrupt,” the man said, holding up his hands with mock patience. 

“Look at him,” she replied. 

The boss stomped forward, clearly impatient, and gave Cody an arch once-over. His expression froze. He turned to the woman, and something wordless passed between them. 

“A fucking clone, Grand-Army-grade,” she sneered. 

He examined Cody again, all curiosity now. They exchanged an unfriendly stare for two complete strangers, but Cody couldn’t help it. The man looked like trouble, vainglorious-dickhead grade. 

“So it’s true…” the boss murmured. 

The woman was beside the crate and shoving at the boss’s shoulder like a thunderclap. “What’s that supposed to mean? You mean you _knew?_” She was demonstrative and demanding, and perhaps a spoiled aristocrat after all. 

The boss rebuffed her. “Pack him up. They made a mistake sending a Republic grunt here, especially with that mug. No one will doubt the threat to our system now.” 

He swept out of the prefab to the swelling drone of engines. The woman scowled after him, then turned it sourly onto Cody, like he had deliberately crashed onto her planet and into her day to engineer this little domestic row. 

She plucked a pistol from a holster, and before Cody could confirm the charge setting, jabbed the muzzle into his bloody temple. 

Cody stared at the terrorist, silently daring her to do it. She'd have to live with his _dar’manda_ soul on her conscience. He didn’t know if her brand of Mandalorian took that seriously, but it wouldn’t be the last she saw of him. He had a lot of brothers who’d be happy jog her memory.

“Death Watch doesn’t take prisoners,” she said finally, above the whine of climbing fighters. 

Cody kept his eyes open. So when she fired into the dirt and fled in a puff of ozone and dust, he didn’t have to convince himself it wasn’t some dream. 

But it was another nightmare. Like calling in a blue-on-blue, blasting a distant robe, bowing before a shadow, and all the other things that he did in the dark but could never talk about. He was Marshal Commander Cody and supposed to be something more than flesh and blood. He was supposed to be Jango’s Finest—Sixty told him so, and so did Lama Su. As the camp fell silent around him and he waited for a rescue that might never come, he thought hard about what that meant. 

The woman called Bo seemed to have some idea. Cody looked forward to meeting her again, when he’d slam her into a Republic cell and ask her all about it. 

**Author's Note:**

> This work plays with a lot of fanon, such as [this Kote joke](https://captaingondolin.tumblr.com/post/172588014543/cody-is-just-a-transposition-in-basic-his-chosen#notes), [this colonialist Kalevala meta](https://inqorporeal.tumblr.com/post/182435667936/okay-im-gonna-do-a-separate-post-since-i-dont), and [a great Vau-Kryze theory](https://izzyovercoffee.tumblr.com/post/173472681640/lmao-sorry-for-everyone-whos-out-of-the-loop-i).


End file.
